Reiner added some other details about the iTablet (right):
• Apple has settled on a 10.1" multi-touch display using the iPhone's LTPS LCD technology, not the more expensive OLED technology suggested earlier.
• Apple has been approaching US book publishers with what Reiner describes as "a very attractive proposal" for distributing content: an App Store-type 30/70 split (30% for Apple) with no exclusivity requirement.
• According to Reiner, publishers are disgruntled by Amazon's terms, which force exclusivity, disallow advertising and demand a "wolfish cut" of revenue. Typical Kindle/publisher split, he says, is 50/50, rising to 30/70 if Amazon gets exclusivity.
• Apple's tablet would make ebooks more attractive for the education market by simplifying functions such as scribbling marginalia.
Reiner also put average price at $1,000, though others say $600-$800.

Getting an eDGe on the Nook
Well with the $259.99 Nook suffering,  another player has put in an appearance. This is the two-screen e-book reader, with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in colour.

The 2-screen device eDGe will be released by enTourage Systems in February for $490, said its VP marketing and business development (left) Doug Atkinson.

The 'dual-book' screen of the eDGe open like a book with facing pages. The e-reader screen is 9.7" diagonally; the color touch screen on the LCD is 10.1 " and the 2 interact. If the textbook on the black-and-white e-reader displays an illustration from a file that is in color, “the machine can moves the illustration over to the LCD and runs it there in color.”

The e-reader screen has a stylus to underline or highlight text, take marginal notes, pull up a blank piece of e-paper for a math problems, or touch a link for a video of a chemical interaction, then displayed on the LCD screen.

The virtual keyboard is on the LCD side, as is audio recorder, a video camera, and  using Google’s Android OS, other applications like word processing can be added.  The 2 screens swivel, so the LCD screen tucks beneath the e-reader in limited spaces, used as a note-taking tablet or flipped to send e-mail.

eDGe is seen as a next hybrid generation of e-readers, neither netbook or tablet nor plain e-reader but a combination of all these. Priced at $490, colour, (midnight or ice-blue, piano-black, ruby-red, glacier-white) adds $40.

Of course, nothing (left above) as yet says Apple's tablet (right above) won't offer bells & whistles with its one screen. But there's something about a book to open, read, write in, then close, that like a laptop that is deeply satisfying.

The answer (right) might just lie in waiting and seeing.